October 14, 2013

MHHFF '13: Haunter

*/****directed by Vincenzo Natali

by Walter Chaw A Paperhouse/Coraline
kind of movie that mixes all that familiar guff into a paste with the can't-leave-this-house crap from The Others and, oh, why not, Beetlejuice,
too, Vincenzo Natali's follow-up to his unfairly-maligned Splice is the genuinely bad Haunter, which plays every bit like a collection of
"Resident Evil" cut-scenes. Abigail Breslin is Lisa, a period-'80s
teenager in a Siouxsie and the Banshees T-shirt who, in a
real knee-slapper, deadpans that "meat is murder" to her mother's
offer of meatloaf, because The Smiths, get it? Doesn't matter. What
matters is that Haunter is a master of overstatement (it wouldn't
surprise me if this Lisa is an homage to the Staci Keanan Lisa), even
taking a moment at the end to pay tribute to Carpenter's Christine for
really no other reason than that it can't help being hyperbolic: the screaming
is screamier, the whispering is whisperier, and it doesn't rain, it pours. Lisa
is trapped in the last day of her life with her family in a sort of Groundhog
Day conceit, except that she's a ghost who eventually figures out that the
same evil ghost dude guy has been killing young girls just like her for
decades, and that it's up to her to break the cycle. This leads, of course, to a
scene from the ending of Ghost--no, not that one, the one before it where the villain gets dragged to hell by bad special effects.

Haunter is anchored by a game performance by young Breslin,
who deserves much, much better than this. It's an adaptation of a "Goosebumps" book in that it's a worn-through conceit pitched at children and
shut-ins. It breaks no new ground, suggests nothing fresh in the leftover
casserole it mixes together, and with nothing on its mind, it proceeds
to be about nothing at all. But while it's never scary and never interesting
(because you're always a few dozen steps ahead of it), what most nettles is the closing sting of a whispered "Leeeeeeeeesahhhh!" that
couldn't be more irritating, frankly. And here's a question: Why is it set in the
'80s in the first place? I'm not complaining about getting to see that shitty
Atari 2600 Pac-Man I once paid sixty bucks for from Sears on a giant CRT
television, mind, I'm just wondering if there's meant to be some impact from
the affectation or if it's merely affectation. Low-budget is a bad
excuse; low-aspiring is inexcusable. With so many delightfully strange and
boundaries-testing genre films in release just this calendar year, Haunter
works as a handy reminder that the other stuff is still in
production--and of what happens when a risky, almost-beautiful movie like Natali's Splice bombs, and he panders to try to get back in the
game.